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NFL Picks

Handicapping NFL Schedules Only for Wise Guys' Futures Picks?

It looks as if the NFL will release its full Regular Season schedule sometime next week—possibly next Thursday the 23rd—but in reality, the release of the specific opponents and those specific dates and the schedule order really only matters to an extremely small percentage: The pro sports bettors, the teams and fans who may attend the games.

Introduction and Some Introductory Rambling
Never has the release date of the NFL’s Regular Season schedule been as over-hyped and rumored about as it has been this year. Rumors of a scheduled April 17 release date had been circulating around for some time, and then today (Monday), Pro Football Talk, citing an unnamed source, reported that the full schedule with Dates and Order—the NFL’s 32 teams have known their 2015 opponents for some time—”is currently set to be released on Thursday” (April 23), but also said, “the date could change.” Last year (2014), the NFL released it’s full Regular Season schedule on April 23, and that may end up being the date again this year, but if I‘ve learned anything solid in my Time here on this Third Rock From The Sun, it’s not to trust most of the things I hear most of the Time from most of the people I hear them from. (And it’s getting worse.) We have become a Rock Floating In Space littered with an overabundance of non-important information and rumors and innuendo and hype and noise and Kardashians and other floating plastic, useless crap. So, the NFL’s Regular Season schedule—thought once to be coming out this Thursday, April 17—may actually be coming out next Thursday, April the 23rd. We’ll know soon enough as Time ticks fast these days, Bubba, and writers and people are now talking and squawking about the NFL in April like it’s some kind of fantastic drug, although the National Football Association doesn’t actually start playing its games and kicking and throwing the pigskin around until September. Hey, now all we need is a TV show trumpeting the release of this NFL Regular Season schedule and this Circle of Stupidity will be fully complete.

What? There is one you say? Of course there is (NFL Network) and since the day Thursday has historically been a Travel Day in MLB, maybe NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is aiming for next Thursday night and the 23rd and as much Pomp and Circumstance as humanly possible. Who knows. Not us yet, that’s for sure. But we have a date. A Maybe Date. Maybe next year the NFL will learn from all of the anticipation from prior years and name a specific date ahead of time and save a lot of stress and stupid questions? A novel idea? But, so easy for me to spouse on a sports betting website. Usually in Life, there are reasons for things and trying to get the logistics just right when you have other moving parts isn’t always easy and can often be next to impossible...until it ultimately gets worked out like everything else in Life. Things like Pope Francis coming to the City of Brotherly Love in September. But, these are just games. And it’s always important to remind oneself of that. Games. We may look at the NFL odds to bet on these things and make some of them way more important than they really need to be, but these are all just games being played by people. It’ very simple. But why does the NFL Regular Season’s release date and order matter so much? And to whom? Are they planning on eating it?

Why This NFL Schedule Release Date Matters and To Whom it Might Matter
The final 2015 NFL team schedules with the specific opponents and the specific dates for the league’s 256 Regular Season games matters most, in the sports betting community, only really to the Heavy Hitter who may be making theoretical 3- to maybe even the occasional 6-digit ($100 to $100,000 and up) Futures Bets, trying to hit The Big Bang, or maybe hoping to create a future hedge or hedges along the way, and focusing primarily on the Season Team Win Totals for the most part as well as on the Super Bowl 50 (NFL Championship) Future Bets to a great degree. To the Common Man or the Smaller Gambler, whether or not the Indianapolis Colts will have to play the Patriots-Steelers-Broncos back-to-back-to-back just really doesn’t matter and if it somehow affects the juice 10, maybe 15 or 20 cents max on a modest $20 bet, then who really gives a Rat’s Ass, right? Why should we be all sweating and talking about really insignificant prices on the vast majority of our bets, which are made recreationally, and not by professional bettors and Wise Guys? Too often the Sports Gambling media caters to this likely less than 1% of the entire (legal) betting marketplace (although the amounts the Wise Guys and Pros bet often affect the numbers more than all The Little Guys combined), and the rest of us have to hear about it (and endure it). Constantly. Like we’re betting thousands. It’s just more noise. That’s all.

The specifics of the NFL schedule affect only the slightest things and hardly anything worth really worrying about it unless you’re Billy Walters or Steve Fezzik or some professional sports bettor trying to find the slightest of edges in the context of a much bigger and ever-changing picture while making their NFL picks. It’s just like almost everything in this Modern Too-Fast World: We have blown it way, way, way, way, way, way out of proportion and now Señor Goodell probably knows that we are addicted to his Silly Drug so he is going to milk us for all the Time and Attention he can. And be careful what you read and digest from that World Wide Web brother, for I have seen some real Freakiness and False Facts in my research and preparation for this story. Freakiness like the NFL 2015 season will be kicking off on Wednesday, Sept. 2—it actually begins on Thursday, Sept. 10 at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro with the New England Patriots taking on a yet to be named opponent—and that the Patriots are (already the) defending Super Bowl 50 champions—Super Bowl 50 will be held on Feb. 7, 2016 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California—and that the Patriots will be allegedly playing the Miami Dolphins in that opener. Reader beware. My thought is it’s best to just actually wait until it actually is released, then over-react if you want to, and then pretend whatever line movement affects your little Life if it makes you feel really warm and fuzzy. The bottom line is that almost all of this is hype and banter and the releasing of Regular Season schedules and movement in the month of April has little if anything to do with 99.99% of us who bet sports and intend on (or already have) making a Futures Bet on a specific NFL team or teams or dabbling in the Season Team Win Totals, which have already been out for some time at places like Bovada and CG Technology.